PI On A Hot Tin Roof

seven—we’ll have dinner first. Did you clear it with your grandmother?”
    “Uh—I was wondering if
you
could.”
    Talba called Adele and argued her into it. Reading between the lines, her main reluctance, it seemed, was permitting her precious niece to spend an evening with a black person, but she couldn’t say that, so it was fairly easy to break her—especially when Talba said Raisa would be along, too.
    That one required a call to the club’s owners. They said, sure it was a bar, but it was also a restaurant, and kids came all the time. So that part was okay. Next, the kid’s dad.
    That wasn’t hard, either. Raisa was thrilled that the kitten had gone to live with Lucy, and Darryl, in turn, was so grateful that he readily agreed to the outing, although he grumbled a few things about Raisa needing her sleep.
    The only glitch was thinking up a reason why Raisa couldn’t see Gumbo—nobody wanted to mention that this was a case of adults conspiring against other adults. She and Darryl finally settled on a story about Lucy’s brother being hurt and needing peace and quiet. But they forgot Raisa didn’t yet know that Buddy was dead. “Oh,” Raisa said. “And how’s her daddy?”
    Talba thought Darryl was going to stroke out. His distress was so evident, Raisa picked it up. “He died, didn’t he? That’s the bad thing that happened.”
    “Oh, honey!” Darryl gathered her close to him. “I’m sorry you have to know something like that.”
    “I’m just sorry for Lucy.” She wriggled away and went to her room to think about it.
    She didn’t ask what had happened. But she did want to know what would happen to Kristin. “She’s a strong woman,” Darryl said. “It’s hard, but she’ll be all right.” That part, at least, Talba felt okay about—no part of it could be considered a lie.
    They took Raisa to the aquarium that day, which delighted her, and also gave Talba an idea for a poem, which she scribbled on the way home. She didn’t plan to read—she was something of a celebrity at Reggie and Chaz and didn’t want to upstage her protegée—but since she planned to introduce Lucy, she wore one of her performance outfits. It was a long lime-green skirt, matching scarf wound around her hair, and matching empire-style tunic with a black and white design on it, in quadrants—lime right boob, the left covered in black squiggles on lime, then a long lime drape on the left hip, and on the other, big white swirls on lime. The flowing sleeves were lime with deep cuffs of the black-squiggle pattern. Even Raisa was impressed. “You look…” she struggled, “…really strange.”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way.”
    Adele nearly flipped. “Where the hell are y’all going? To some concert or something? You didn’t lie to me, did you?”
    Talba laughed. “Nope. I didn’t,
I
am a baroness.”
    Seeing Adele’s blank stare, she said, “It’s my shtick. Want to see my Web site? It explains it all.”
    She regretted it instantly. They’d have to go to Lucy’s computer, and the kitten was in her room. “Oh! I forgot. We took it down to work on it. But here’s the short version—I have this affectation, and it’s…” She posed, indicating her outfit. “…this.” Then she had an inspiration. “It’s a black thing.”
    “Oh. Will there be any other, uh, I mean…”
    “Is it an all-black restaurant? No, indeed. This is one of the few integrated poetry readings in town, thanks in large part to
moi.
You do thank My Grace, don’t you?”
    Lucy stared in amazement. Talba realized that she was behaving in character, already the baroness, already on stage.
    Adele looked ready to change her mind.
    Quickly, Talba said, “Sorry. I forgot I didn’t have an audience.”
    Adele’s face was grim, but she said, “Well, have a good time. Lucy, remember your manners.”
    Lucy giggled. “Oh, Mommo. Nobody says that any more.”
    “Just be a good girl.” As she kissed her granddaughter, Talba saw Adele’s eyes fill. Probably because of the giggle. Lucy wasn’t doing much giggling these days.
    They were nearly out the door when Lucy said, “Hey, I forgot something,” and raced back upstairs.
    “She seems better,” Talba remarked, setting the stage for Rikki’s eventual discovery, hoping to weight the judgment in the kitten’s direction.
    “She does.” Adele seemed puzzled. “I guess kids are more resilient than we think.”
    “The poetry